Mount Cone, VK5/ SE-002

After activating VK5/ SE-009, Ian VK5CZ and I drove north of Burra, and onto the Goyder Highway and then north on the Barrier Highway. About 10 kms north of Burra we turned right onto Mount Cone Road and travelled right to the very end of the road which leads to a homestead.

Mount Cone summit is located on private property owned by Mr. Simon ROWE. He is one of the founders of T&R Pastoral company, which is the largest beef and lamb trader and processors in South Australia and one of the largest family owned in Australia. There is another Mount Cone located 100’s of kms away down south on the Fleurieu Peninsula.

We then followed a dirt track across some paddocks leading up to the summit, busbashing in my Falcon XR6. We parked the car about 300 metres from the tower at the summit, and climbed up hill the rest of the way, which was a steep but fairly easy climb up the dirt trail.

The view from the top of Mount Cone is really quite amazing. You can just see the tops of the Flinders Ranges and Mount Bryan is clearly visible to the north. The big wind farm on the tops of the hills is out to the west, and the town of Burra is clearly visible to the south. It is a great take off out to the east

Again, Ian and I set up to stations. He used his Elecraft KX3 and an end fed antenna. I used my little Yaesu FT-817nd and my BandHopper 40m/20m linked dipole. I secured it to a wooden fence post with an occie strap.

No wildlife seen on the hill, except for a large wedge tailed eagle who was keeping a watchful eye on us. The only animals were cows grazing on the hills. As Ian said to me, they must be the fittest cows in the mid north of S.A.

It was absolutely blowing a gale up here. Incredibly windy and it was a real challenge to keep the squiddies from collapsing….which happened quite a few times. They were certainly bending in the wind, almost as if we had a squid on the end of each of them !

I ended up with a total of 39 QSO’s. This included quite a bit of DX on 20m SSB into the USA and Europe. Another highlight was a summit to summit QSO with Marshall VK3MRG/p, who was on top of Pretty Sally (so to speak), VK3/ VC-034. It was also great to make contact with David VK5KC, and John VK5BJE, who were both operating portable from the Scott Creek Conservation Park in the Adelaide Hills, as part of the VK5 National & Conservation Parks Award. Both had terrific signals up to the mid north.

I filmed a bit on top of the hill with my i-phone, and I’ve placed it onto You Tube. It can be found at …..

This was the end of 2 enjoyable days for me. I journeyed back the 2 hours to my home qth in the Adelaide Hills. And after the bed at the Burra pub, I certainly enjoyed the hot bath and climbing into my own bed that night.